First, make sure you have all the necessary components. Included in the kits you should have the following:

Mechanical items - A wooden bowl (treated on the inside to prevent water damage)
- A 12VDC power supply (Note: If you're not in the US, you may need a converter or have to find a local 12vdc power supply)
- A DC pump with ridiculously long power cord
- A nozzle for the DC pump
- A highlighter (source of fluorescent ink)
- 2x Small plastic zipties
- A slanted piece of foam to catch the drips without splashing

Using pliers, jam the lead attached to the white wire through the tubing about an inch above the opening. Position the other wire about 1/4 to 1/2 inch away from the drip opening so that a falling drop will hit it before it detaches from the drip opening. Putting it at a slant helps the drop fall off cleanly.

Now place the 3 buttons. They must be oriented correctly - notice that the leads come out of two opposite sides of the button - these must be facing up and down with respect to the above image. Make sure the leads go through where the green circles on the image have indicated. The middle button spans more holes than the side ones, for symmetry.

Now place the transistor and the capacitor. The transistor flat face faces left. Bend the transistor's two outside leads toward the socket, and solder them to the pins they touch (socket pins 12 and 14). Bend the center lead outward so it doesn't connect to the socket.

For the capacitor, take mind that the banded side MUST go to the center pin of the 7805. The other side connects to the bottom "In" pin of the 7805. If the capacitor is in backwards it may explode, so make sure it's right!

Now pull out your hookup wire and make the ground bus around the board like the thick red line shows. You do this from the bottom of the board; it doesn't have to come over to the top of the board. The bus must connect to:

- The ground (middle) pin of the 7805
- The right-side pins of all 3 buttons
- Socket pin 5
- The emitter (top) pins of each power transistor

Grab the part of the fountain you assembled already and connect the drip sensor line. The white wire must be the one jammed through the tube, and the blue one should be the one that the drips will touch as they fall.

Cut the connector off the end of the 12V adapter and solder the wires to the 7805 as shown. Use a voltmeter to determine which lead from the adapter is positive and which is negative. The positive lead goes to the Input (bottom) pin of the 7805. The other one goes to the ground (center) pin.

Finally, connect the LEDs and pump to the board. The pump Blue wire goes to the center pin of the top power transistor; the Brown wire joins with the Blue wire of the LEDs and they are connected to the power supply positive voltage (bottom pin of the 7805). The Brown wire of the LEDs goes to the center pin of the bottom power transistor.

You're done! Put the PIC chip in the socket so that its notch lines up with the socket's notch.

There's still some adjustment to be done, so follow these instructions to get your fountain working.

Testing your assembly

Plug in your Time Fountain with no water in it. You should see the UV lights flickering and the pump should gradually speed up then stop. If this happens you've built your fountain correctly so far. You can proceed to the moister section. If not, check the Troubleshooting section for possible solutions.

If you bought an assembled fountain

If you bought a pre-assembled fountain, you may be disappointed to find that it is not fully assembled. You will have to put the pump into the bowl yourself, sorry! Everything else is built, though.

Using your Time Fountain

Start by filling the bowl with water. It should come to within a half inch of the top of the bowl. You'll have to add water periodically as it evaporates and/or splashes out.

Chew the back end off of the highlighter and extract the ink sponge. You only need a few drops to get the water very fluorescent.

Plug the fountain in (make sure your hands aren't wet). The pump should power up and slowly build until the water starts dripping out. If the water starts spraying everywhere then you don't have the sensor correctly positioned - the water stream should hit the sensor when it starts.

The Time Fountain automatically chooses an initial speed for the motor but it's up to you to fine-tune it to a stable drop stream. Use the left and right buttons on the fountain to slow down or speed up the pump. You know you have it right when the drops appear stably frozen in mid-air. You may also have to experiment with sensor positioning.

Press the center button to enter "Stable" mode. In this mode the drops will stay frozen, and you can use the left and right buttons to move them up and down.

If you press the center button again, you will enter "Slow motion" mode, where the drops fall in slow motion. Here the side buttons do nothing.

The last mode is "Backwards" mode where the drops will move backward in time. Again, the side buttons do nothing.

Hitting the center button again will return you to "Motor Adjustment" mode.

That's all! I hope you enjoy your Time Fountain as much as I do mine.

Troubleshooting your Time Fountain

Okay, so something went wrong with your Time Fountain. Here are some common problems:

When I turn on my Time Fountain, the pump gets faster and faster then stops.

Something's wrong with the sensor. For the sensor to trip, it needs a bridge of water between its two leads - the white one inside the tube and the blue one hanging in space below the drip opening. Make sure that your sensor is wired correctly and that it is positioned to be hit by falling drops before they disconnect from the drop opening.

The LEDs don't light up at all.

Either the LED wires were installed backwards, or there's a short circuit - check that the LED anodes are connected to the power supply and that the cathodes are connected to the center lead of a power transistor. Also examine the leads on the LEDs for a short circuit.

I can't get the drops to freeze in mid-air.

This could be a sensor misalignment - the sensor might be too far or too close to the drip opening to get a good on-off-on-off reading when drops go by. Also try using slower pump motor speeds to make bigger drops.

If you have any other issues, please contact me at timefountain@natetrue.com or post a comment below and I will be sure to help you out.

great.
thanks for such detailed explanation.
i have a doubt.can i use the above code to control only LED by means of drop sensor.my problem is,i have bunch of small AC pumps.and i want to use them for fountain.so i'll make the constant dripping system(say 10 drops per sec.and using the drops sensor and the buttons can i get those back/forward effects.
ultimately i want to use the pump independently,not controlled by PIC.so is this possible with the current available code.
thanks once again for your effort.

It works! Thanks, Nate. I found it easier to wrap the LEDs around the plastic tube before soldering to the brass rod. I ended up soldering those things like 3 times before I got it right. Also I agree with syslord, the resistor values are wrong in the image and a pic of the completed board would be helpful.

But the important thing is that it works and I'm having a fun time playing with it!